J. M. Hale. He reported on this gift to the Monday Evening Club and covered it in his announcements from the pulpit. He urged his parishioners to support the project.
On one occasion, in company with Dr. Seeley, a local fellow preacher, he started a movement to establish a "Women's Union for Good Works."
He had ever had a dedication to the field of foreign missions, a feeling nurtured by exposure to discussions in early family years, the seminary and the pastorate. Suddenly, through an incident connected with his School Committee role, the light of the mission field was turned on for him.
The school authorities wanted the site on which the old Atwood house was standing for a new high school building and the City of Haverhill purchased it for that purpose. Harriet Atwood, the third of nine children born there, had died at the age of 19, just as she arrived in India as a missionary. She was one of the many young people who thronged to the mission fields under the authority and guidance of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.7
The Rev. Dr. Hyde, filled with the message as he related it at the memorial service and subsequently wrote it out for publication, found the poignant trail beckoning to him. Dr. Rufus Anderson of the Prudential Committee of the American Board heard of Hyde's recital of this touching tragedy and of course had followed his highly successful work in the Haverhill pastorate and the earlier Brimfield charge. A ministry school in Hawaii for natives was in need of resuscitation and Anderson began to feel that Hyde might be the one for the job. It was not in response to the "beckoning" however, that termination of his services was, shortly after that memorial service, recorded in the Haverhill church minutes. He had no immediate mission plans:
. . . The five years of pastoral labor which I shall have completed tomorrow in connection with this Centre Congregational Church and Society have been to me a busy and blessed period of service . . .
In the Providence of God, however, consideration of personal duty in reference to the present conditions of affairs in this Church and Society, have convinced me that I ought to ask your consent, as I do herewith, to the termination of my pastoral relations to you, in order that I may be free to enter into other engagements, in another field of labor.8
When this letter was read, a committee was appointed to wait on the Rev. Dr. Hyde to express regret and ask that he withdraw his resignation. He thought this over and two weeks later the clerk read his reply:
The request of the church that I would, if consistent with my views of duty, withdraw my resignation, I cannot but regard as a gratifying testimonial of persistent confidence and affection . . .
But to those who would thus interpose what they may consider a needless and unaccountable termination of a five year pastorate of harmony and prosperity, I must say that I have not acted unadvisedly. I cannot see it to be my duty to withdraw my letter of resignation and I reiterate the request I have made.9
Following essential Congregational landmarks an Ecclesiastical Council was convened December 15, 1875 at the vestry to listen to Dr. Hyde. After hearing his explanation the Council deliberated in secret for half an hour:
. . . After listening to the presentation of all the facts in the case it was unanimously resolved that it is expedient that the Pastoral Relations now existing between Rev. Charles M. Hyde D. D. and the Centre Church and Society be dissolved at the close of the year 1875 . . . We are surprised and pained to learn of the Existence of a state of things in this Church and Society which makes it seem to Rev. Dr. Hyde to be his duty to withdraw from a position which he has so ably and successfully filled. We are happy to make special note of the Ministry of Rev. Dr. Hyde in this place, as having been attended with the blessing of God in the Conversion of Souls; in the quickening and enlargement of the Church; and in the compacting of this Religious Society and we do most heartily commend our Brother to the Confidence of our Churches as an able Preacher, a tender and faithful Pastor, and a Christian man, whose character is a recommendation of the Doctrines he has taught and a pillar of strength to any cause . . .10
All in all this was a strange termination. No record shows or will ever show the convincing testimony he must have presented. Thus, irrevocably, the pastorate at Haverhill was ended. In retrospect, a famous theologian, the Rev. Dr. Charles M. Clark, commented on how the Hyde-Haverhill record was of such quality that it seemed providence had shaped his path to Hawaii:
Mr. Hyde was a man of fine presence, urbane manners, genial spirit, "a loving pastor, devoted to his flock, and greatly beloved in the houses of those whose hearts were pressed by want, or anguished in grief." Like his two predecessors, he was a man of unusually scholarly tastes and abilities. Even while here he was greatly interested in education. He was also greatly interested in missions. To his scholarly tastes and ability he added a quite uncommon executive capacity, the ability to conceive large plans and to move strongly and wisely and successfully for their accomplishment. It was not strange, therefore, that he was chosen to lead in a new educational institution, under the American Board in Honolulu, for the training of a native ministry, and that he became a foremost factor in all educational work in the Hawaiian Islands from his arrival there in 1877, till his death in 1899. In Dr. Hyde there was embodied in peculiar degree the instinct of New England Congregationalism for education, and the capacity of the Congregational ministry to lead in educational work. Dr. Hosford was pre-eminently a pastor; Dr. Munger, a preacher; but Dr. Hyde . . . a teacher and educator.11
Eighteen seventy-six turned out to be a year of the unexpected. Charles Hyde's sudden conclusion of the Haverhill pastorate temporarily made him a free lance. His visits to the old home towns of Brimfield and Lee stimulated invitations to write their town histories. By coincidence, but for different reasons, each town was ready for a celebration and a publication.
The town of Lee was observing the centennial of its founding in 1877 and because the Hyde families had been long and favorably associated there, and one member of a Hyde family had achieved renown throughout New England as a scholar and a preacher, it was decided to ask this man to deliver the Centennial Address and prepare a history for publication—the Rev. Dr. Charles McEwen Hyde.
The history of Lee, as prepared by Hyde, is a massive compendium of war, rebellion, and peace. It takes in town meetings, industries, institutions, crises, biographies, roads and trails, rivers and mountains. The research led Hyde across the breadth of Massachusetts.12
The Brimfield history was not based on its own centennial but was rather a spontaneous response to a joint resolution of Congress. The United States was due for its centennial shortly. For an account of the project and Hyde's involvement in it we turn to the book of Brimfield history as he organized it:
Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That it be, and is hereby recommended . . . to the people of the several states, that they assemble in their several counties or towns on the approaching Centennial anniversary of our National Independence, and that they cause to have delivered on such day an historical sketch of said county or town from its formation . . . and [a] . . . copy in print or manuscript, be filed in the office of the Librarian of Congress.
By vote of the Legislature of Massachusetts, a copy of this resolution was transmitted June 13, to the clerks of each of the cities and towns of the Commonwealth.
On receipt of this communication Mr. Henry F. Brown, the town clerk of Brimfield, presented the matter to a few of the citizens, who, while approving of the object, thought it desirable to postpone the matter to a later date than the one named in the Resolution of Congress, and on Sunday, August 27, a notice was read in church inviting all persons interested in securing as many of the facts of the settlement and early history of the town as might be done by a Historical Address and other means, to meet at the Selectmen's room the following evening. At this meeting . . . Rev. Dr. G. M. Hyde was selected to prepare and deliver the Address.
Wednesday, October 11, dawned one of Autumn's brightest, and at an early hour the roads from every direction were thronged with teams and foot passengers, all eager to be on hand for Brimfield's grandest and proudest occasion . . .
[a] procession marched to the church, where it arrived about 11 o'clock, and which was filled to overflowing